Antoine Deneriaz of France out for season after Chamonix crash

Antoine Deneriaz of France out for season after Chamonix crash{mosimage}CHAMONIX, France — French skier Antoine Deneriaz is out for the season after tearing knee ligaments in a crash during a men’s training session Friday. Deneriaz, airlifted to a hospital after crash landing off a massive jump on the Piste Verte, strained the medial collateral ligament and tore the anterior lateral ligament in his left knee, team officials said. Deneriaz will travel to Lyon, France, early next week for an MRI to determine the extent of the tear.

“His season is over,” said the head of France’s men’s team Gilles Brenier. “We all know the price for a torn ACL. He’ll likely start training again in July and start competing again next season. That’s a rough estimate until we know how badly his ligament is torn.”

The 27-year-old Frenchman lost his balance coming off the second of two enormous jumps then landed badly, snapping his left knee from side to side before wiping out.

The mishap occurred in the final training run before this weekend’s World Cup downhill races. The winner of three World Cup downhills, Deneriaz had been one of France’s top medal hopes for the world championships in Bormio later this month.

In Wednesday’s training session, American Bryon Friedman broke two bones in his right leg and two bones in his left hand after losing control off a small bump on the upper section of the course.

“The jumps are really big,” said Bode Miller, the overall leader in the World Cup standings. “But it’s one of the things that makes this course so cool because there isn’t too much to the downhill so if the jumps aren’t big it’s a tucking race. You have to be really, really focused and you can’t make mistakes coming into them.”-The Associated Press